Santa’s Beard Advent Calendar

This was an easy one that took me about 20 minutes from start to finish – gotta love quick projects!

Ellie is in love with all things Christmas but like all 4 year olds, she has no concept of time and hates waiting. She gets that from me. The hating to wait thing, I totally get time now that I am older than 4. I knew I wanted to do an advent calendar for her this year but wanted it to be really visual and so when I saw a Santa’s beard calendar/countdown on Pinterest, I was so excited!

The concept is simple – put dated circles on the beard area of a Santa drawing, glue a cotton ball on every day and when the beard is full, Santa comes that night! This a 4 year old could understand!

I used the Santa from the Doodlecharms Cricut cartridge and added circles from Designer’s Calendar and my favorite numbers from Sesame Street Friends. I made the numbers random so Ellie has to hunt a little for the correct date. I used a black marker in my Cricut and Ellie watched enthralled as Santa appeared on the paper:

Ellie colored in the red on his hat and since we did this on the 2nd, Ellie was able to glue on two of the cotton ball beard pieces right away! This morning, it was the first thing she asked for so I am going to say it was a hit.

I will update with a picture once we have the full beard cotton-balled in! This was so easy I can see doing this project again next year with one for each of the girls.